


The Truant Homunculus's Return

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Gen, also Ronnie Schiatto the first, don't look at me like that it's not my fault they have exactly the same name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-07 00:32:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6777016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After three years missing, the wayward homunculus returns to his teacher and the man who created him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truant Homunculus's Return

**Author's Note:**

> oh my god this is the most obscure thing I've ever written. ever. and yet I'm not sorry at all. Working from [monomae's translation of 300 BC](http://monomae.tumblr.com/tagged/baccano-300-bc). I couldn't do all the incessant anime references, though, I'm sorry.  
> 5/24, edit: alright "Ronny" it is

The metallurgist’s secondary study was not small, but it was so crowded with scrolls and diagrams and arcane tools that it felt cramped. Not that the metallurgist himself seemed to mind. Sitting at a desk along the edge of the room, he was reviewing his notes on the day’s experiments when an unlikely breeze teased the hair at the back of his neck and made all the candles flicker at once. He didn’t bother to hide a smile.

“Good to see you still have that flare for the dramatic.”

A sigh from behind him, and then a voice that sounded like his: “And you are as irritatingly unruffled as ever. ‘Master.’”

Ronny the metallurgist turned to see his mirror image: the homunculus he had given his name and physical form to and then taken as a student. Ronny the homunculus did not meet his eyes for more than a second, instead sitting himself down at the table in the center of the room as an open scroll appeared before him. It was the scroll that the metallurgist had just been reviewing.

“Have you greeted the others?” the metallurgist asked jovially.

“No.”

“What a cold way to treat them, after not seeing them for three years! How are they supposed to plan your ‘Welcome Back’ party if they don’t even know you’re back?”

The homunculus snorted. “I don’t want a party. And while it may have been three years since any of you have seen me, _I_ see all things at all times.”

“All except the future,” Ronny I corrected him helpfully. “Remember, disciple of mine, precision is important in our work. You won’t find the path to immortality without _precisely_ the right balance of botanicals and _exactly_ the right temperatures.”

“I’m not looking for it. And according to this, _you_ still haven’t found that alleged path to immortality, either.”

The scroll appeared on Ronny I’s desk again, instantaneously rolled and tied shut. The metallurgist deposited the scroll with the rest and then looked back at Ronny II. The homunculus’s face was carefully blank.

“I don’t intend to apologize for missing Anacletus’s burial,” he said stiffly.

Ronny I shrugged. “It would be incredible if you did, you know. The universe itself apologizing to a mere man! I almost wish you would, just for the novelty of it. Though I _am_ your creator and your teacher, so maybe it wouldn’t be so novel after all.”

“For the novelty of it,” Ronny II repeated after him. “Not for the sake of your friend?”

“ _Your_ friend, too,” Ronny I answered.

For a moment, the homunculus’s face twisted, and tears glinted in his eyes. But in a breath, they were gone as though they’d never been.

As though the fabric of the universe itself had folded to take them away.

Ronny II stood and wandered over to the window, turning his back on the metallurgist. The curtains blew lightly aside before he touched them, somehow never quite revealing his face to anyone who might be standing outside. For a long moment, he was silent, a solemn figure outlined against the dark.

“I never could have foreseen his striking his head against that rock,” he said at last, “because I was born of his contribution, too. But when I saw him fall backwards and heard the crack of his skull—I knew it was too late for him, but once, I could shape time like a melody from an instrument, and I thought—”

“You tried to save him?” The metallurgist hadn’t known this part. He listened intently as his creation/disciple spoke again.

“It should have been easy, even without the ability to shape _his_ time directly: Discover when that stone came to be there and shift it out of the path of his head long before we came across it that day. Once, it would have been easy for me. By the time I realized I no longer had that ability, in the split second it took me to realize that, Anacletus was gone to a place I’ve never seen.”

It had been the homunculus himself who had brought Anacletus back to the metallurgists’ compound, carrying the larger man’s body as easily as he might a child’s. In a calm voice, he had explained what had happened to Ronny I and the rest before retiring to his room. And by the time the sun rose the next morning—

“And then you ran off,” Ronny I said, mercilessly jovial once more.

The homunculus didn’t deny it and didn’t flinch at the tone that might have been called mocking. “It was too much. I thought—I would have said that it was more personal, more intimate, than it is right for me to be. This form is a game, ‘Master.’ Just an amusement. Even if I have given up the future, I am in all things. I _belong_ in all things, not limited to this human form. And so that is how I spent the last three years, woven into the fabric of the universe.”

“That sounds like a good time!” Ronny I said. His voice was dry. “Meanwhile I redoubled my efforts on immortality, just in case you never came back. I knew that as long as I could achieve that, I’d have all the time in the world to track you down and laugh in your face at your certainty that immortality can’t be done. That’s still the plan, by the way.”

“Impossible. If I saw you achieve that, I’d avoid you and your intolerable gloating like the plague.”

“Oho. You mean to say you would watch me?” Ronny I smirked.

Ronny II scowled over his shoulder at the smug metallurgist. “I see _all_ ,” he repeated. “I may at any time turn my eye to the furthest reaches of the heavens or the blackest pits of the sea. It follows that my gaze might occasionally fall on you and your ilk again.”

Ronny I stared back at his creation for a long moment before bursting into long, loud laughter.

Again the homunculus scowled. “What.”

“Awfully big words for someone who’s taken human form once again and come right back to where he left from. There’s a reason I turned your room into my new study, disciple! I knew that this is where you’d come home to.”

“ _Home_?” the homunculus repeated, nose wrinkled in distaste.

“Home,” the metallurgist reaffirmed, certain and smug. Then his face softened. “Why not just tell the truth? It’s a simple deduction even if you won’t: you fled because you cared too much. Obviously, you’ve come back for the same reason. How much of your time did you spend watching us from a distance?”

The breeze that had been making the curtains dance ceased all at once, and they stilled as Ronny II turned back towards the window. He, too, stood utterly still, not even needing to breathe.

But finally, he spoke again.

“It was nearly constant,” he confessed. “I meant to look to other places, but I always found myself focusing on all of you. And it would have made sense if it were just your experiments, but even when you were just eating together, when you were celebrating some triumph or another…”

“When we were mourning?” Ronny I asked quietly.

Ronny II sighed. He turned away from the window at last, but he stared at the floor rather than looking at his teacher. “Yes,” he answered. “Yes, to the question you’re going to make _me_ define rather than asking it outright: I was watching Anacletus’s burial. I watched all of you weep. I watched you lower him into the ground and take your final look at him. I, too, looked upon his face for the last time that day. I couldn’t look away.”

He raised his eyes then, and there were tears in them again. This time, they didn’t vanish.

“Does it always feel like this, when someone dies? —I know the answer,” he said without giving the metallurgist a chance to respond. “I can read it on your heart, on their hearts, on the heart of every man who’s ever encountered death. This pain was already a part of me, and I thought I understood it. But then I watched the light leave Anacletus’s eyes and I _experienced_ grief for the first time.” He looked at the metallurgist. “What have you _done_ to me?”

“I’ve helped you learn something you never could have discovered on your own,” Ronny I answered with a fond smile. “That’s the goal of every great teacher, isn’t it?”

“And what if I don’t want this discovery?” The homunculus’s face twisted for a moment. His voice raw, he added, “It _hurts_.”

“It’s part of being human,” Ronny I told him.

“I’m not human.”

“True. But you’re more human now than you’ve ever been.” Ronny I gave a smirk, reminiscing. “Or would you have preferred for your consciousness to simply fade away? That was your plan before I coaxed you out of your bottle, remember. Incidentally, I seem to remember that you seemed a lot less troubled when you thought _I_ was dying, but I will generously forgive you for that. After all, we weren’t friends then.”

“Are we friends _now_?” Ronny II asked, his voice skeptical.

“Aren’t we?” The metallurgist approached his creation and laid his hands on his shoulders. “Why did you come back here, my disciple? Why couldn’t you look away from us?”

The homunculus shrugged Ronny I’s touch away, but he didn’t answer. He only narrowed his eyes instead.

Ronny I smiled in response. “Don’t you know, my omniscient creation? It’s simply because we’re your friends.”

“Impossible,” Ronny II said, but he didn’t sound sure of it.

“Oh? Then let’s test my theory, pessimistic disciple of mine. I’ll call everyone here to see you, and if you’re annoyed, then you’re right: you don’t consider us your friends. But if you find yourself feeling a joy and comfort that you never could have known from inside your bottle, then you’ll have your answer.” He raised one eyebrow. “That is, if you can’t already guess what the result of that experiment would be.”

For a long moment, the homunculus was silent, his face blank and controlled. Then, finally, he closed his eyes and shook his head. A faint smile crept up his face.

“All right,” he said. “You win.”

“Hah!” Ronny I raised his arm in a cheer. “Not only have I created a perfect homunculus, I’ve befriended him as well!”

“You didn’t befriend me in my perfect state,” Ronny II pointed out.

“Didn’t I?”

Rather than answer Ronny I’s question, the homunculus cast his gaze around the room, his hand on his chin. “Anyway,” he said, “if you are all my friends, that means I’ll be staying here again. Which means…”

“Hm?”

He snapped his fingers, and in an instant all the accoutrements of Ronny I’s work vanished. In their place appeared a bed, a low table, and a collection of jade statues reminiscent of the art of the Far East. As Ronny I gave a nervous laugh, wondering where his work had wound up, Ronny II just smirked.

“I’m taking my room back.”


End file.
